Due to extinct technology..Would you have a Media Player

[Mickymoody]

Look like a record revolving, with an option of adding a crackle? MP3's are compressed, and don't give perfect sound, CD's a little better, but I feel that there is a purity of records. An earthy sound?

Most kids don't even know what a record is. But I feel, as a retro addict, that records, and tapes, especially reel to reel, should be reintroduced, because CD's are on their way to being obsolete, and MP3's...CD's get scratched, Cd players die, MP3's are virtual. A physical media should exist...the virtual media will die. How many people have photo albums online? Do you really believe in 30 years time that technology will exist? Where a photograph will?

So your baby photos online, now, will not exist in 5 - 10 - 20 years? Whereas previous generations, have a photo album.

 

[wotan]

Add to the above, electronic books, what will this ultimately do to the printed word?
Banks are phasing out cheque books, what will happen in the event of major computer malfunctions?
Communications digital signals, vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses, sat navs would become useless, TV and some radio communications wiped out.
Change for changes sake is not enough, there should be alternatives, the demise of mankind will be the result of his own doing.

Wotan

 

[ladylola]

How many people have photo albums online? Do you really believe in 30 years time that technology will exist? Where a photograph will?

So your baby photos online, now, will not exist in 5 - 10 - 20 years? Whereas previous generations, have a photo album.

Correct, it's something social historians have commented on before, modern photos are stored and very often just deleted if the owner gets bored with them whereas prints and negatives get shoved in the back of a drawer but ultimatly are still in exsistance.I seem to recall someone saying that this generation is the more photographed but less recorded than the last.
Also agree with what you say about music, cd's aren't any great advancement over LP's in terms of sound and have similiar problems of scratching and jumping. Granted smaller and more portable but ultimatly doomed in the great scheme of things.
I suppose being something of a luddite that I always prefer a physical object be it a recording or a book over a download off the web any day. I tend to see downloads as on a par as taping a friends album when you were a kid, yes you've got the music to listen to but it's not quite the real thing

 

[thatbloke]

Analogue will always have a fuller signal than digital, when it is compressed some of the frequency that you cannot hear is removed but to be fair unless you have a serious analogue set up then CD's will be miles better.
I dont do MP3's, I use WAV or FLAC , preferably 24bit/96000KHz but my analogue set up will always blow me away.
Thinking that you have quality mp3 recordings is like saying dab radio is a quality broadcast, it isnt.

Edit - I have several ''media players''.

 

[Mickymoody]

I presume people are used to watching bad TV, and bad CD recordings..

Especially when the flagship show on BBC1 airs, then encoders are wound up. The TV pixilates for a few minutes, as the broadcast happens..But my NON HD TV, still views HD pictures on non HD TV....so are HDTV's so bad, or only experts realise the difference?

I think CD's are recorded at 44kHz, thatbloke will be along to correct me, I apologise if I got it wrong, and MP3's are even worse. What we listen to or see, is the Government staing a system, that pays them the most money for bandwidth.

Betamax, was superior to VHS, it got binned. Analogue, is superiour to digital. If you get signal loss with analogue, you got a fuzzy screen..With digital, you get no picture. BSB was superiour to Sky, BSB got binned, who is the owned Rupert Murdock. Remind me what happened to the last newspaper king? Oh he killed himself, after all his fraud was found out, to the tune of billions of peoples pensions.

 

[thatbloke]

I think youi are right, A CD can go to 44.1KHz. 16bit, however you can also get 96KHz which is 96000 samples per second with 24 bits per sample, which is better if you like analogue over digital.

 

[Space cat]

It's true that a pristine record on a top quality deck will outperform a CD - though I suspect that few people would notice the difference. - but the CD has at least two advantages. Firstly, if you treat it well it won't degrade with use. Secondly, and much to the annoyance of the record companies, you can make a bit-perfect copy.

Then there's its smaller size, the ease of track selection, and the ability to read it straight into a computer. I think the CD will be around for a long time to come.

MP3 is definitely inferior to CD, though many people still don't notice. When memory was expensive and download speeds were limited, MP3 was a major breakthrough (again, much to the annoyance of the record companies ) but its days may be numbered. Given a high speed internet connection and terabytes of memory, serious audiophiles might prefer a lossless format like FLAC.

Betamax, was superior to VHS, it got binned.

Both are analogue systems and, yes, Betamax was superior (it was a scaled down version of the U-matic system as used in professional recording studios). It got binned because Sony were greedy and tried to keep the whole thing to themselves. If they'd released it as a standard (as Philips did with the cassette tape and the CD) VHS would never have happened.

VHS was technically inferior, mostly because it had to get around Sony's patents. The first machines also cost about 25% more but, in addition to their other sins, Sony failed to spot the demand for pre-recorded video. Many more movies were released on VHS than Betamax and that clinched it. Sorry Sony but no cigar!

If you get signal loss with analogue, you got a fuzzy screen..With digital, you get no picture.

How very true. Digital radio is the same. That's the nature of digital data; it's either right or wrong.

 

[ladylola]

Digital radio is the same. That's the nature of digital data; it's either right or wrong.

The other thing that rakes me off about digital is the energy consumption, wheather it's radios, tv or cameras they all eat more power than their analogue counterparts. By the way I do realise I've incorrectly labelled non digital cameras as analogue.

 

[Space cat]

I've incorrectly labelled non digital cameras as analogue.

No you haven't. Photographic film is an analogue medium.

 

[ladylola]

Photographic film is an analogue medium.

Hmm, there is the very valid argument that the term analogue (or analog if you're outside the UK ) is wrongly aplied to what is actually nothing more than a chemical process, film is just an emulsion of light sensitive chemicals on a celloid strip. I use a photographic forum at times and the term bugs the hell out of some posters on there, although to be honest I'm not bothered either way.
It is a term that was never used for film cameras before the introduction of digital but enough people have used the term that it's pretty much taken as fact nowadays.
As I said I'm not really bother either way but here's a blog from someone who takes it seriously-
http://www.solareximaging.com/Main/Blog/Entries/2006/6/14_Misnomer_-_Analogue_Photography.html
of course the misnomers work both ways, for example "the didital darkroom"

 

[Mickymoody]

Space Cat, I won't quote, due to excessive quote ban on this forum, what I say, and you confirm about VHS vs Betamax and BSB vs Sky, I was taught at college, that due to the legal implications about VHS, copyrighting Betamax, that, in theory, on paper, mathematically, the VHS system shouldn't work. So a few tricks were implemented.

I honestly cannot see the CD being used, as it is today, in 10 years time, I think the trend would be high capacity USB sticks, when USB3 is fully rolled out. There is memory capacity today to make a HD capable device, so I see games being sold on USB sticks. CD will become the floppy disk of yesteryear..8" floppy disk, 5.25, 3", 3.5" all gone. CD's were massive, like an LP, then standard, then minature, I feel they are going down the same route.

Or the alternative route; the 'Cloud', a low powered PC, that just downloads content as required. Asda has these, their tills have no hard disks, in a tiny box backoffice, but the till computers are PC sized, with no Hdisk. Everything is loaded to flash memory, but has free access to internet etc, as a normal PC does.

 

[thatbloke]

A lot of PC based high end audio players use solid state memory instead of HD's because of their quietness.
I cant see the CD going anywhere soon, I think they are here to stay for a while longer.

 

[Steve]

Or the alternative route; the 'Cloud', a low powered PC, that just downloads content as required. Asda has these, their tills have no hard disks, in a tiny box backoffice, but the till computers are PC sized, with no Hdisk. Everything is loaded to flash memory, but has free access to internet etc, as a normal PC does.

How do you know this? AFAIK, no company would rely on the back office servers for the operation of their 30+ tills in each store. Certainly in the stores I work in, the back office server recieves price updates overnight and hosts them to the till hard drives when they turn on in the morning - the tills operate on a wake-on-lan system. The server can be shut down without affecting the operation of the tills.

And the amount of flash memory that would be required for all the price and product data wouldmean it would be a hard drive.

 

[Space cat]

-- there is the very valid argument that the term analogue --- is wrongly aplied to what is actually nothing more than a chemical process --

I call film analogue because the video information stored on it is continuously variable in density and hue (and also position). In this respect it's like the groove in a vinyl disc which stores audio information as a continuously variable displacement.

The blogger seems to object to the idea of an analogue camera - and I agree. It's the means of information storage that's analogue, not the device which processes that information. Similarly, we shouldn't really say "digital TV box", or "digibox", when we mean "a box for receiving digital TV signals". That's sloppy use of language but I think we're stuck with it now.

I think the trend would be high capacity USB sticks

I have no doubt that flash memory is the best choice for portable media players and also car sound systems (for which CDs were never ideal) but, for general domestic use, there's something about a CD (or DVD) in a box that you can put on a shelf. Also, I wouldn't like to try rummaging in AS*A's bargain bin for a movie on a memory stick!

-- a low powered PC, that just downloads content as required --

I would never trust my music and video collection to some remote server. I've learnt the hard way that stuff gets deleted from the internet and whole websites can disappear. HP are notorious for 'losing' vital data. I once searched for drivers and manuals for a Jetstore 2000 tape drive, only to receive the reply "The device does not exist." Sorry HP but it definitely does. I have one in front of me with your name on it!

This is also why I will never buy a Kindle. If I've heard it right, Amazon keep a record of books you've bought (from them of course because it won't work with anything else ) and will replace one free if you lose it. Sorry but no deal. If I ever buy a digital book, I want a backup copy where I can see it.

 

[Whitespirit66]

Would I have a media player?

After changing from records (still have a big collection), to tapes (all now u/s) to CDs, and from VHS to DVD, I can't be ar$ed changing again. With most of my previous moves, there was the benefit of improved sound/picture quality and useability. MP3 and DAB seems to be a backward step in quality.

So, no media player.